Bidding & Budgets

Set and Manage Bids

Once you create some campaign performance data, you will have some cost data that you can analyze. Analyzing cost data will allow you to adjust bids to get the type of performance from your campaign and its ads that you desire. In this topic, you will analyze bids for a campaign and optimize bids for ad groups and keywords.

Campaign Bid Simulator

The AdWords Campaign Bid Simulator is a tool for estimating performance of a campaign when you change bids. The Campaign Bid simulator uses data from the previous seven days to provide information on the click, costs, and impressions your ads would have received had you used different maximum cost-per-click settings. If you’re e thinking of changing your bids, use the Campaign Bid Simulator to estimate the impact to confirm that the change will give the desired result. The Campaign Bid Simulator is available on the opportunities tab in AdWords.

Keyword Bidding in Click-Focused Campaigns

In a click-focused campaign configured for manual bidding, you can configure bids for ad groups and individual keywords in your campaign on the appropriate sub-tab. You configure bids by setting the Max CPC value for the ad group or keyword. When you set the Max CPC value for an ad group, that bid is applied automatically to all keywords in that ad group. When you set a Max CPC value for an individual keywords, that takes precedence over the Max CPC value set for the ad group.

You can configure all ad groups with the same max CPC, but there are many reasons why you might set different bids for different ad groups. For example one of your ad groups may have more competitive keywords that require higher bids for better positions. If there is a keyword that generates a high number of conversions, you may also want to set a higher Max CPC for that keyword.

Any adjustments you make to Max CPC in ad groups for bids should be analyzed in the Traffic estimator to gauge impact on impressions, clicks and cost. You will need to raise your daily budget to accommodate increased costs.

Keyword Bidding Options

You have the following options when setting bids on keywords

Set max CPC bids to – Allows you to set a dollar amount that overrides the ad group max CPC for this keywords.

Increase max CPC bids by – Allows you to increase the max CPC by a percentage of dollar amount and set an upper limit

Decrease max CPC bids by - Allows you to decrease the max CPC by a percentage of dollar amount and set a lower limit

Raise to estimated top of page bid – Attempts to bid to guarantee a top-of-page display for your ad. This can be costly, as top-of-page ads are the most expensive.

Raise to estimated first page bid – Attempts to guarantee that your ad will show on the first page each time it is displayed. Your daily budget and other factors will determine ad position.

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